California primary: Hilton calls election system a 'joke' and calls on Newsom to create emergency rapid response teams to speed up final results

Republican candidate for California Governor and leader in the primary count so far at the polls Steve Hilton, exploded against the Golden State's electoral system, which he called a "joke." In addition, Hilton demanded the governor, Gavin Newsom, to initiate the creation of emergency rapid response teams to prevent the recount from being delayed even a month as the most pessimistic forecasts point.

With hundreds of thousands of votes still to be processed days after the June 2 primary, Hilton launched a proposal to create what he called an "Emergency Election Recount Acceleration Corps" to staff election offices with additional personnel and resources to reduce times.

Results within 48 hours after the close of the mail-in ballot deadline

The objective of the proposal is that the electoral results can be presented -complete and verified- before 8:00 pm on June 11. That is, 48 hours after the deadline for receipt of mail-in ballots.

"California is the laughing stock of the nation when it comes to election reporting. We are the fourth-largest economy in the world, home to Silicon Valley and some of the most advanced technology on earth, yet government bureaucrats need a month to count fewer than 10 million ballots. It’s insane. Every election brings the same excuses, the same delays, and the same collapse in public confidence. Californians deserve better.”

India's example, shame on California

Hilton contrasted the example of India, where hundreds of millions of votes are counted in a single day. Something that makes California's process "unacceptable" for a state that bills itself as modern and cutting edge.

What Hilton proposes is to allocate state employees in non-essential administrative positions and make them available to the election offices of those counties with significant delays. In addition, it points to the creation of regional election "backup teams" to deploy as quickly as possible where the worst backlogs are being recorded.

Empty counting stations despite the delay

Hilton's proposal gained even more weight after The California Post complained following his visit to a 13,300-square-meter vote processing center. The media outlet charged that many of the work stations appeared empty, even though there was a backlog of more than 700,000 ballots being processed.

However, the Republican candidate made it clear that this is only a short-term stopgap, since what is really needed are deeper reforms that could allow voters to trust the electoral system again.